LifeCycles, an Orangery and Demonstration Garden Exhibit, opened
Friday and will run through April 7.

Six architecture students from the University at Buffalo created
the exhibit, and each of their designs focuses on strategies for
the potential of the horticulture attraction.

“We can present to the public, members and donors these
concepts that could be at the Botanical Gardens,” David J.
Swarts, Botanical Gardens president, said during Friday’s
opening.

Fashionable in Europe in the 17th to 19th centuries, an orangery
was a building, greenhouse or conservatory where citrus trees were
wintered and moved outside in warmer months to provide event
space.

All six plans were designed with the possible addition of an
Orangery at the Botanical Gardens.

Timothy Boll’s design – Convective Gardens –
reproduces the Gulf Stream effect in which a cold source on top and
hot on the bottom creates different climates. Boll’s design
re-creates the effect in a single room that has suspended platforms
with a variety of plants, explained Nerea Feliz, a visiting
architecture professor at UB. It minimizes the need to subdivide
collections in different houses of the Botanical Gardens.

“You can have cacti and [cold weather] plants in one
room,” Feliz said.

Lauren Colley’s Botanical Immersion uses 10 different
pavilions to create a new garden experience. It weaves the interior
and exterior of the Botanical Gardens with South Park so that park
visitors can view the gardens from outside.

“We merge the [two] to make it a one-user
experience,” Colley said.

The idea behind Orbits, a proposal by Nathaniel Heckman, is to
remove various plants from the current building and put them into
different buildings to open up the Palm Dome for weddings, parties
and receptions.

Vincent Ribeiro’s Selective Branching and Marc
Velocci’s Adaptation both focus on buildings that can
extend/expand and contract according to the needs of the gardens.
The architectural flexibility allows the buildings to adapt to
seasonal change and temperatures.

Ribeiro’s design is like a “telescopic
structure” that allows building sections to expand and
contract as plants grow, Feliz said.

In the Adaptation model, structures would be affixed to tracks
that would move the buildings to be bigger or smaller. This allows
for flexibility of buildings to host different collections and
exhibits, Felix said.

Christa Trautman’s Carving Coherence aims to unite the old
and the new by inverting some of the domed structures to create
excavated gardens that mimic the forms of the exiting domes.

The exhibit is included with admission to the Botanical Gardens:
$9 for adults, $8 for seniors at least age 55 and students at least
age 13 with identification; and $5 for children 3 to 12. Garden
members and kids under three are free.